Category Archives: Working

Pricing & Negotiating For Photographers – Tag-teaming with TV crews on ad shoots

I’m super excited about this new monthly column entitled “Pricing & Negotiating” coming in from the fine folks at Wonderful Machine. Since they price and negotiate for so many photographers they’re in a unique position to show us nearly any scenario you can think up. Here’s the first one:
Tag-teaming with TV crews on ad shoots
Our [...]

Point A Camera And Their Clothes Fly Off

Looks like Seliger and GQ are in a little hot water over the Rielle Hunter (John Edwards affair) pictures where she’s got no pants on (MSNBC Story Here). The only reason I’m commenting on this at all is because I’ve been on the receiving end of phone calls by publicists and subjects who’ve done things [...]

Negotiating The Editorial Contract

Bill Cramer has an excellent piece on negotiating an editorial contract with a new client over on Wonderful Machine (here).
It’s pretty amazing that people starting out on the publishing side know so very little about the appropriate terms to include for hiring photographer. Inevitably it starts with boilerplate language handed to them from some well [...]

A Guide To Paper Buying

Of all the things that make up a magazine, paper buying is probably the least understood. It’s also the most expensive line item in the monthly production of magazines. The quality of the paper was always a huge gripe in the Art Department, but I would have gladly taken a cut in quality for an [...]

Dave Labelle On Storytelling

This is part of a profile of photographer and teacher Dave LaBelle that Fran Gardler made as a final project for his masters at Ohio University. You can see the final piece (here) but this is a part that was cut:

All the videos are (here).
thx, Jonathan.

Picture Black Friday

Looking for something to do this Friday besides shop? How about participating in an open call to document Black Friday:
“Picture Black Friday is a photojournalism project that aims to revisit and analyze a combination of forces- a worsening economy, financial desperation, excitement, fear, and a distinctly American cultural tradition- that culminate the morning after Thanksgiving.”
Read [...]

Perception Is Everything – For Photo Editors

One of the mistakes I made as a photo editor early on was copping a “can do” attitude when it came to finding photography or making assignments. I figured I would just work as hard as I could and the end result was what it was. The problem with this is nobody factors in the [...]

How To Photograph The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

I remember several years ago sitting in a meeting talking about “the great pacific garbage patch,” trying to come up with a way to photograph what we felt was an important story. A floating patch of plastic garbage somewhere between twice the size of Texas and the size of the U.S. was out there but [...]

The Business Of Photography – Books

John Harrington sent me his latest book “Best Business Practices For Photographers” and at over 500 pages It’s a real door stopper. It has the look and feel of a college text book: loaded with examples, little notes sections along the way, 32 chapters and a cover image/design that screams textbook. For anyone looking for [...]

Oyster Hotel Reviews – Hotel Photo Fakeout

I like this new hotel review site, Oyster Hotel Reviews, because they understand how powerful the editorial voice can be when making a buying decision and they understand a photograph will convey the most information in the shortest amount of time. They’ve hired a bunch of writer photographers to go check out hotel properties and [...]

Peter Yang and Rolling Stone Win Magazine Cover of the Year

I’ve sat through too many meetings where badges, sashes, boxes, hairlines and an entire dump truck full of coverlines were added to perfectly good cover images or instead a meeting where perfectly good cover images were thrown out in favor of images that held coverlines better, to not point out the irony of a winner [...]

A Cautionary Behind-The-Scenes Video Tale

This cautionary BTSV story was submitted by a reader:
On a recent national advertising shoot we used our back-up camera, my new 5D MKII, to shoot some behind-the-scenes footage of me at work. We edited it down into a 3-minute video that we posted on my Facebook Group page. It wasn’t particularly exciting, but it [...]

Untitled – The Movie

This movie looks funny as hell. “What attracts me to his work is how uncomfortable it makes me feel.”

How Do You Decide What To Charge?

Taking a cue from the Creative Review Blog I wanted to ask my readers as well: How do you decide what to charge?
Here’s an excellent Cost of Doing Business Calculator (here), where you input your desired salary, then add up all the business expenses that can’t be billed back to the client and it gives [...]

Matt Mendelsohn – The Lessons of Lindsay

In 2007 Matt Mendelsohn heard from a friend about a recently graduated fashion student who had all 4 limbs amputated. At the time she was near death but soon turned the corner and a year later was teaching fashion at her alma mater, Virginia Commonwealth University. Matt, a longtime journalist, decided he needed to go [...]

APhotoEditor Is Taking The Week Off

see you next week.

Ten Things I Have Learned – Milton Glaser

1. You can only work for people that you like.
2. If you have a choice never have a job.
3. Some people are toxic avoid them.
4. Professionalism is not enough or the good is the enemy of the great.
5. Less is not necessarily more.
6. Style is not to be trusted.
“… the point is that anybody who [...]

Sir, We’re Not The Taco Stand

“Sir, we’re not the taco stand” I clearly remember an argument with my editor once where he stood there for half an hour trying to tell me that the shoot budget needed to come down and I tried to explain that no, if he wanted to pay less then we needed to change the shoot [...]